Talk:Eishi/@comment-26569133-20150707132337/@comment-4391208-20150707163721
I don't think this wiki is in need of any actual "power" rankings or if it's even possible to make one, since, as it is with the TSF generational standing, it's not something that you can put into definite categories without any word from the creators. Like David922 said you have to consider a lot of factors. In all honesty, I would think that Yuuhi would be an average pilot precisely because she's a symbol; for the time where the Takemikazuchi has been in active service she has been a symbol and a political figure (since the JP wiki places her ascension to Shogun as just before Operation Lucifer, and in that period of 24-hr culling operations to keep the BETA from swallowing the whole of Japan no one is insane enough to tell the Shogun, who likely has to coordinate the various IRG units moving around in support of the Imperial Army, to grab a unit and go run a high-risk intercept-and-destroy or laserjagd mission, especially not in any repainted Zuikaku when the IRG just got their pride smashed along with the Army's), not a combat leader, unlike Kyoko or Ikaruga who were given active commands of their own. Since they never specified her operations, her flight time could easily have been training sessions against other IRG pilots, at the most a handful of intercept-and-destroy ops of small groups landing in from Sadogashima, which, while placing her above the Yokohama cadets, still fall short of any frontline active personnel's, to say nothing of balls-to-the-shores veterans like those in the IJN's Wadatsumi corps or the IJA pilots maintaining the Niigata line. I highly doubt that the Shogunate would allow the Shogun herself, their leader and their figurehead, to lead directly in any significant fights where the mettle of pilots would have to be truly proved; fights like those tend to take away whomever they want on a whim or an unlucky moment, skill or strength be damned. The risk is just too high. The same goes for all the IRG, but to a far lesser extent, since they can still afford to pick their fights, unless the IJA gives way in front of the BETA, but at least Ikaruga and Kyoko, despite being potential next-in-lines for the Shogunate if Yuuhi vacated or was unable to carry the position, don't have unit commands on the same tier as what amounts to General of an entire branch of the Japanese armed forces, and we know that they were in active operation during the Invasion of Japan, which would have been a key period in which pilot skill could be developed. More flight time than cadets can't compare to a scramble order every other day for almost a year, and that's just up until Operation Lucifer. Since the fudai do get involved in military projects outside of military operations, they can't also just deploy as and when they like, which limits what they can do. Sure they can change project leaders everytime one bites the dust, but that would just be a needless delay. We also don't know enough about what the nobility do when they're not piloting TSFs; Ikaruga, at least, seems to have his positon as battalion commander as the main aspect of his work, but the rest are elusive. We don't even know if they all get TSFs or if they get theirs by volunteering for the IRG, which would probably have to limit its intake to prevent one ill-timed battle from wiping out the entire structure of royalty if that was the case. Sagiri would easily be a match for any one of the characters listed, Marimo included, having fought through Gwanju and Operation Lucifer prior to his coup while leading a prominent unit in his own right; his position is a bit more solid because Takeru actually remarks on his excellent control of TSF operation when they met with him during the coup (as I recall, the degree of precision of his TSF's landing), and the manga expands on this further by having him at Gwanju and Lucifer, one being a known slaughter for military personnel in order to save refugees, the other being an offensive drive-turned-chaotic battlefield until the US intervened. Yuuya Bridges, however, while skilled, only got his killcount record because of a superprototype weapon built to penetrate all known defenses, fired from a static position. He's capable of pushing his limits (his time as an Eagle driver against the EMD Raptor, his improving synergy with the Shiranui Second P1 during Kamchatka, his overall performance at Yukon against human opponents, and his combat against the new BETA class at Evensk, to name the better examples) but his setting of the kill record has about nothing to do with any of his actual skills (not to mention piloting what is likely, and could be definitively said to be the strongest TSF in MLUL/A as of current date, short of setting up a battle line of railcannon-module A-12s behind superior cover; he also gets a squadron of esper pods-controlled Su-47Es as combat assist at Evensk against that super BETA while Soviet forces work together to keep the other BETA off his back. I don't believe that anything could have solo'd it, but he had a fairly good assist force, and that was just counting the Berkut-Es). Latrova is a unit commander, not a battle group commander. While TSFs are grouped under ground forces terminology their method of tactical/strategic operation in the series are still very much like aircraft whereby group/wing leaders like Majors and Lt. Col/Colonels who would have been sitting in Field HQ in any land army unit (unless it's a battle tank unit or an infantry unit), commanding their battalion elements, would actually be out there with their people during live combat; otherwise Sagiri, who commands a wing, should not have been anywhere near combat (since he would have someone take over the task of commanding the first unit of the wing, which DID happen in TDA, somewhat, since Komaki controls only the first battalion after Marimo is taken off the roll). Her appearances in TE have not shown contrary to that assumption; unlike pure leadership positions, paperwork is just another burden of a higher rank alongside their combat duties. The same goes for Sagiri, Kyoko, Ikaruga; anytime a character is shown as a combat leader. Field command is not just making decisions, it's making decisions in seconds that could make or break one or more subordinate's lives, and that's just the start of the nightmare when you have 108 TSFs and your paltry backup of land vehicles (which, if they're artillery, are only useful if they're kept at range and your main force is not mixed in with the BETA in the thick of combat) against upward any number from 100~ to 10 000~ BETA and beyond looking for some jaw exercise on live targets. Add to it that the commanders are just as in the thick of it as the subordinates; not only is combat skill required, but multitasking and an appreciation for the greater tactical and strategic picture; things that aren't naturally gifted, but have to be learned through repeated encounters with. Those who start their rise in the ranks are those who start thinking beyond "I am the Strike Vanguard and I am good at my job." to "I am the Strike Vanguard and I'm good at my job, but could I have paired up better with that Impact Guard in that last battle to avoid that close shave?". They move to element commanders, then squadron commanders with "I am the Strike Vanguard, what if there had been two more Storm Vanguards to fit this battle's flow? Do I really need more than two Strike Vanguards as it is now?", and so on and so forth. Given the highly skill-emphasized TSFs, while there are a lot of contenders in front of Latrova, Sagiri easily being one of them, she's a pretty legitimate nominee in her own right even if it's all based on personal skill. Of course the point can be refuted that Sagiri never fought through any US forces garrisons for a prolonged period or faced off against XM3 equipped units unlike Komaki, but that's a different can of worms for another post. And then we bring in the pilots in the other parts of the world, dominated by people such as the Zerberus members whose squadron leaders are veterans of the oft-talked-about Defence of Britain, each known squadron leader also being aptly named as part of the group called the "Heroes of Britain", or the clinically insane one-offs in TSFIA where you have British pilots with BWS-3 Greatswords being pilots especially skilled in picking apart Fort-class BETA like wool off a sheep, the US Marine 2ExpF pilots for whom live combat is an occurence every other day in A-6s when everyone else can fly for an easier getaway in case a screwup occurs, Egyptian pilots in F-4Es willingly and offensively engaging BETA with knives so that they can save their bullets for the Laser-classes (they succeeded), or even the group of Orbital Divers called the Chicken Divers, experienced pilots who, after being choosen to be repeatedly shot into space for as long as they remained alive, survived a whooping ''three ''operational orbital assault drops against Hive positions (because, you know, getting flung into low orbit to re-enter planetary atmosphere at unholy speeds and directly into Hive tunnels where there are more BETA than there is ground is just another day's work for any other Joe Schmoe pilot, amrite), and then there is the entirety of East Germany solo'ing the Minsk Hive's unceasing retribution for almost a year after every other nation from the Eastern European Socialist Alliance had their front doors kicked in and their gardens upturned... ... you can see that any sort of speculation is a mental exercise for the sake of fun; ML builds its engagements around situations, not who has more power over the other. There isn't any hard statistic apart from very vague common-sense lines like "pilots with real experience should be better than simulator hogs", which, while largely true, is of course, overturned by Raptor pilots who likely need that human-vs-human experience in order to accurately seek and destroy human targets; an example of "situation before statistics" in and of itself.